Over the years, digital image processing has advanced and gesture recognizing intelligent devices such as the gaming device ‘XBOX Kinect’ from Microsoft Corporation are finding their ways in consumer market. On the other hand, electronic components are getting smaller and less power consuming. This has led to new breed wearable computer devices such as the wearable computer device ‘Samsung Gear’ from Samsung Corporation, and eye glass type wearable computer ‘Google Glasses’ by Google Inc.
With the advent of small wearable computer devices it has become a challenging task to efficiently provide data or command input to these devices. Also, there is a need for a wearable device that can be used as data or command input device to various computer devices including gaming devices.
Speech recognition based data input methods are available but because of inherent noise, and different accents and speaking speeds of user the speech recognition technology is prone to high error rate, thus this technology has not been widely accepted, and using standard size computer keyboards for inputting data are still prevalent. Compact tablet computers have an onscreen keyboard yet it is a common trend to use wireless standard size keyboard for data input.
In video game industry, the ‘XBOX Kinect’ device from Microsoft Corporation is a well known gesture recognition device that captures human body motions and is used for controlling video game functions. However, using ‘Kinect’ in its present form or similar technologies it is difficult to precisely track complex or small variations in the movement of fingers of a user, because of their distant stationary architecture which result in significant error in depth analysis of small items like finger tips. This is one of the reasons that handheld controllers are still prevalent.
Hence, there are needs for a smart wearable device that can be used as data input device for various computer devices or remote controlled appliances. Research related to this requirement has already started and some technologies like those disclosed in PTL 1, PTL2, and PTL3 are some examples of current technological advancement in the field. However, the said technologies have many shortcomings which prevent them to fulfill user requirements. These shortcomings are described in the ‘Technical Problem’ section of this document.
The current invention not only overcome the shortcomings of the prior art but also provide new features to enhance ability of user interaction with various computer devices.